@Puyunet the majority of your comments I agree with. However, unfortunately, you have to remember that Zorin's hands are tied to using the Gnome desktop and Canonical.
I've recently responded on a different forum about Zorin 18. I feel they missed a golden opportunity to wow Windows 10 end-of-life users:
Let's take a blow-by-blow response.
Installation
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Clickable Try or Install.
I agree entirely about clicking the Icon and not the text below it as that is what I did first because as users we are used to seeing icons with text underneath. This is an inherited Gnome issue which I suspect is hard locked by Gnome who act like the Software corporation users are leaving behind. -
World Map.
Believe me it is more modern than most distributions that only give you City Time/Geographic Time Zones when it comes to locations. -
Encryption.
Never been fond of that on either GNU/Linux or Windows. Whilst the process may have improved over the years, I always remember the dire warning when I installed SuSE Linux 9.3 Professional that enabling encryption can lead to data loss. This actually happened when I was working as a Technician for a school Integrated Resource; my manager asked me to setup an encrypted data partition on Windows XP for her business officer. 2 days later it had gone west! Fortunately the Business Officer was knowledgeable enough to have backed up their data beforehand.
My preference would be to store data on a separate drive without automount with backups to external drives. External drives should only be used offline (machine not on internet) as ransomware attackers have been known to identify external storage hardware.
True Freedom of Choice
(I think this is better heading than Operating System as it takes things out of context).
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Browser choice.
Currently the best OS for this is PCLOS Debian. Zorin used to have a limited chooser (4 Browsers) which Feren OS modified with even more choice. PCLOS Debian's Browser Installer was created independently of Zorin's browser chooser. -
Office Suite.
You need to remember that having multiple Office Suites to choose from would make the .iso huge and in terms of setting up links to official providers may have to be negotiated. Personally I like PCLOS Debian's approach of not having Libre Office present by default and the choice of either installing th whole suite or choosing individual elements. Personally I prefer SoftMaker Office 2024 Professional over anything else for MS compatibility. They offer a free one without all the bells and whistles but still compatible. -
Mail App.
I have to disagree on this one as Thunderbird is becoming more Google-centric (you cannot remove embedded Google elements in its backend). Evolution is by far the best email app out there and my first customer the other week was pleased to see it coming from Outlook previously. -
A.I. - Don't get me started. It should be banned from mere mortals who can't think for themselves.
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Firewall - this is disabled from the get go as it is in Plasma. You have to enable it if you want to. Makes more sense to be on with the correct profile (Home/Business etc.).
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Timeshift.
I agree entirely but it must come from the source which is up-to-date, not from Software. Plus advice on reminding snapshots need to be saved to Ext4 FS the same as the OS. -
Update
Agreed, and it should also point to Main Server, not country server which can be days behind. But then again I don't like Canonical. (I no longer use Zorin as my daily driver, I prefer bloatware free OS's that don't use systemd, the one exception, Q4OS, a great Plasma rolling release, good up to mid 2028. Q4OS has a great welcome screen which includes a brilliant App Chooser Installer interface. -
I can't comment on the laptop stuff but this I believe has always been a bit of an issue when it comes to GNU/Linux.
Online Accounts
On this one I think people need to seriously consider "Do I really want to continue using a service provided by a Data Scraper?" For me the only Online Account I trust is Murena with servers in Norway.
Clock and Date Layout
That is why I prefer Plasma over Gnome.
Power Button
As before, limited Notebook experience.
Business Edition
Zorin Grid
Still in development query.
Business Edition
At one time they did have a dedicated Business Edition that you had to purchase like Pro (Pro was previously Ultimate).
Security
GNU/Linux has never had the ability to do real-time scanning. That said, vulnerability potentially will arise by using WINE (Wine Is No Emulator) and how far it progresses is dependent on WINE devs being funded through their commercial endeavour, CrossOver by Codeweavers. Your only (native) security tools are ClamAV, rkhunter and chkrootkit which natively have to be run in the terminal, but ClamAV does have a GUI, ClamTK. Additionally Snap and Flatpak are another potential security vector and packages don't interact properly like APT packages.
User and Device Management
User Management can be achieved by ensuring nee users are given Standard user status and not Administrator privileges. In terms of hardware access you remove them from certain device groups.
GUI for File/Folder permissions
See last response.
Software Compatibility
See security above. Additionally, the best workaround is to have Windows as a virtual-machine; this is what a local engineering company did when they upgraded to a newer version of Windows the software used to control the lathes no longer worked. Solution? He put Fedora Workstation on his machine and installed the version of Windows that worked with his software as a VM. Problem solved.
Hardware Certification
As Zorin is a fork of Ubuntu I would draw your attention to Canonical's (Ubuntu) Hardware Certification.
Dell has had a long-standing relationship with Ubuntu so I would go with them instead of Lenovo.
One area you have not mentioned is Accessibility. The default compositor, Wayland, excludes users with accssibility needs. If you want a secure all-inclusive OS then I would look at Devuan 5.0.